New Order for Global Salmon Aquaculture

UK - This week a meeting was held in Edinburgh to develop global aquaculture standards for salmon. More than 80 per cent of the world's salmon stakeholders were present, amongst scientists, organisations and government representatives.

The standards, when adopted, will help minimise or eliminate the salmon farming industry's key impacts on the environment and society, says FishUpdate.

FishUpdate says that it was the 12th meeting of the Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue since it was formed in 2004. The meetings over the past two years have primarily focused on the presentation and discussion of scientific reports about the various negative impacts related to salmon farming. Information from the reports, written by technical working groups, will be used in creating the standards.

"Participants at this week's meeting confirmed the main guiding principles for addressing the impacts and offered helpful suggestions to make them more robust", said the news agency.

The principles, which had been identified at previous meetings, include conserving natural habitat and local biodiversity, as well as protecting the health and genetic integrity of wild-caught salmon. The principles had been available for public comment for two months prior to being finalised.